Become a better League of Legends player

5 champions you should not learn

When you just started playing League of Legends it’s tempting to pick up an exotic champion that can do all kinds of stuff. It’s cool to save for the high IP costing champions and you might even think it will give you an edge. Often the opposite is true and your investment of IP and time will only backfire. Learning the basic champions will have you learn the game at a correct pace starting at a good spot. These are extremely cheap for a reason. A cheap champion has no risk when it’s not that good in the end or more importantly doesn’t suit your playstyle. Hence focusing on champions with a low IP cost is a good way to learn the game. It also leaves a lot of your IP open for runes and champions you really need later on. As a new player at League of Legends you should be realistic. Chances are small that you can understand why some champions are weaker than they seem to be. Your gut feeling may have you thinking Swain is great

Here are 5 champions you can skip as a starting player

5. Yasuo – Yes, he is awesome and yes he can become very strong, but you are running into some traps when trying to master Yasuo as one of your first champions. He gates you into the role of a midlane squishy damage dealer with not much versatility in builds. He also requires knock-ups in his team to use his ultimate to the full potential. You’re constraining your team by picking Yasuo. Especially at the lower levels where you cannot expect your toplaner to be a magic damage dealer or ask people to become good a champions with knock-ups. Starting players have only learned so many champions. Chances are big there’s nothing in their pool that works with you.

4. Lee Sin – The most controversial champion in this list. Lee Sin is a very strong champion and one of the best junglers, if not the best. His kit is overloaded with mechanics and he is heavily skewed towards the early game. After learning him to some degree you’ll feel like a god reaping kills during the early game, but still you’re losing a lot of games. This must clearly be the fault of your team! The noobs you’re paired up with messed up your game, right? Fact is that Lee Sin scales into the lategame much worse than you’d expect him to do. This next to his hard to use skills that frankly give you too many options for a new player may as well have your hard work backfire. Raging at your team is not something you should learn yourself too early.

3. Shaco – A fun champion to play because of all the deceiving stuff you can pull off. However Shaco has no real place in a game that’s based around teamfighting. His skills are OK in the early and midgame to mindgame your enemies but they do literally nothing in teamfights. Shaco is better at escaping the splitpush when it goes wrong than doing the actual splitpush. He has an early game where he can invade the enemy jungler (Shaco is only really playable as a jungler) but the effect of invades since the Season 4 patch simply doesn’t stick anymore. You may catch some people off-guard who never jungled before. As you progress you’ll notice how you are up against people who played jungle as much as you do and they can come back from anything you throw at them since they scale into something useful.

2. Poppy – The only cheap champion on this list, so not really a risk in terms of investment. But Poppy isn’t in a good spot. She is very weak and RIOT stated several times that this is where they want her to be. Even in the hands of a great Poppy she still has a huge windup time. Surviving through the early game can be a pain on her and you’ll be looking for an unconventional runepage to do so – which will cost you too much IP for too few rewards. She can become a beast and she has many cool tricks in her kit. Oddly enough this is her problem. The game designers don’t want her to be good overall before they change her abilities, because if she ever gets strong in a game she’s a pain to play against.

1. Fiora – She’s a weak champion. Fiora brings nothing to a team but damage and does not bring this in larger doses than easier and more forgiving champions like Yi, Tryndamere or Jax. If you mess up your early game as Fiora you’re nothing more but a spectator. The Grand Duelist leaves you wondering how she ever got her title.

The most important advise I can give you is this: Do not drool over a champion based on what you see in videos or streams, but did not experience yourself. Use a free week or a friend’s account to see if you click with the champion. If you really love a champion… go for it and play the hell out of it. The game is about having fun in the end, and if you have more fun on Olaf than on Renekton you’ll probably do better on Olaf in the long run.

About the authorlumni

Owner and Founder of Learn-LoL.com. Spends 90% of his games in the Jungle and often surprises himself and his friends (not always in a good way) with aggressive plays.

4 thoughts on“5 champions you should not learn”

you are a noob dude, delete this article and the site, example “She’s a weak champion. Fiora brings nothing to a team but damage and does not bring this in larger doses”
dafuQ? do you even know what you are talking about? she is an assassin who takes out carries with 2 hits. omg.

the article is very correct i support every word even though in my case i started as yasuo to be my first paid champ and now i’m ultra strong mid with him but i’m finding it difficult to learn other lanes or champs because of this. mages are just no longer for me. and thanks for the article 🙂

Lmfao, bro… that Fiora shit is hella wrong… do you even know her? Or just want to negate the community from using her… I can burst in a 5v1 and still come out strong. It’s all timing… talk about burst.. your ass is gone in 1 second. Q, E, auto, slow, Ravenous Hydra, and critical strike… are you even in existence? 4k damage 1 second…